My Grandparents' War

So his grandad is a rich banker in Hong Kong who before the war lives for 6 years in Japan. As the fighting starts grandad gets shot in the stomach, avoids getting murdered like ALL the other wounded. Manages with a stomach wound to march into captivity and then gets put in a special camp for batmen.

As a witness says "his grandad was a powerful man in finance and regularly got special parcels" I bet he did.

But what grates is Rylance (who I used to adore before this) goes banging on and on about the evil of empires. He then gives moral equivalence to to the appalling, depraved beyond comprehension (read the book by Iris Chang and the very recent one by Bryan Mark Rigg) Japanese and the British.

I switched off. Why does the BBC hate its people so much? It's depressing.

This series reminds me very much of WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, but it was much more revealing about familial relationships and background. These first four installments should be followed by many more. Excellent production values, intriguing discoveries, and a prize-worthy lineup of initial subjects: Helena Bonham Carter, Mark Rylance, Kirsten Scott Thomas, and Carey Mulligan: would love to see them cast in a film together!

Went into this 'blind' - was expecting a 4-part series about Helena Bonham Carter's Grandfather, then found out it would include Mark Rylance, Kirsten Scott Thomas, and Carey Mulligan's Grandfathers tales also. This was a great series - a deep dive on otherwise obscure boy-men: Their experiences in WW2, and some of their later relationships with their descendants. I found all of them to be interesting, even to someone whose father fought in that war and is somewhat of a history buff.

The one slight downer was Mark Rylance, whose pacifist views seemed to prevent him from being challenging/exploring a view from a Japanese apologist (a letter had supposedly been sent to FDR the day prior to the atomic bomb being used hinting of a surrender - so we 'overreacted'). He accepted this assertion at face value and never even questioned the torture of his father or compared the allies treatment of prisoners to Japans. This distracted me from the otherwise gripping account of his father.